Q and A with Karen Armstrong, as she revives her faith
By JOHN BLAKE
Cox News Service
ATLANTA -- After writing about history's greatest spiritual leaders
for the past 20 years, Karen Armstrong experienced a revelation that
would shock many religious people.
Few of the "founders" of the world's great religions were interested
in creating new religions. Not Muhammad, not Jesus, not Buddha - not
even some of Judaism's greatest leaders, she says. Each taught that
practicing compassion was supreme. Believing in certain doctrines was
ultimately unimportant.
"What mattered was not what you believed, but how you behaved,"
Armstrong says. "Religion was about doing things that changed you at a
profound level."
That simple message was so radical that later generations diluted it,
but the popular British author is trying to revive it in her latest
book, The Great Transformation (Knopf, $30). The book's title is her
description of a spiritual renaissance that took place from 900 to 200
B.C. during what she calls the Axial Age.
Armstrong says some of humanity's most transcendent spiritual figures
- Buddha, Confucius and the Hebrew prophets - suddenly sprouted across
the globe during that time. They all preached a similar message.
Forget about trying to find God through rituals and doctrine. Turn
inward and practice compassion instead. Their message subsequently
shaped figures such as Jesus and Muhammad.
Armstrong argues that people must absorb the lessons of the Axial Age
or humanity won't survive. Some of those lessons are personal to her.
An ex-nun who lives in London, she left the Catholic convent she
entered as a teenager after seven years and took on an academic career
that included having her dissertation rejected and being fired as a
teacher.
Today her best-selling books have been translated into 40 languages,
and Armstrong is considered by many to be the world's premier writer
about religion. Armstrong talked by phone from New York during her
current book tour.
Q: What's so fascinating about the Axial Age?
A: We got the idea these days that to be religious, you have to hang
onto tradition. The Axial Age was a time of great innovation. It was a
complete revolution in thinking that proved to be the axis of the
spiritual history of humanity, the hub of the wheel, the pivot upon
which everything has since continued. The people such as the Buddha,
Socrates, Confucius, all inherited very ancient religious traditions
and they all in their different ways turned them around so that
religion was about being creative, not conservative.
What about the importance of holding onto religious tradition and
orthodoxy?
The Axial Age sages were not interested in orthodoxy. Orthodoxy means
correct teaching. They weren't interested in theology much at all. For
them, religion was not about belief or holding onto correct beliefs
but about behaving in a way that changed you at a profound level.
How does one behave in such a way?
The essence of Axial Age religion is the disciplined practice of
compassion. Compassion could not be confined to your own particular
group. It had to be what one of the Chinese sages called "concern for
everybody." That meant that you just couldn't love people in your own
group or your own church. You had to extend your compassion to every
creature.
You also say in your book that Jesus didn't teach doctrine. Explain
that, please.
Does he mention the Trinity, the Incarnation or original sin? What you
see Jesus doing is going around being good, asking questions. They'll
ask him what is the greatest commandment and he says, "Love the Lord
your God with all your heart." But he's not telling them what the Lord
your God is, whether he is the Trinity or not. There's very little of
that.
Are dogma and intolerance the inevitable result of religion?
In Buddhism, it's not a particularly important part. Dogma is neither
here nor there. And similarly in Judaism. I remember years ago, when I
was just starting out on all of this, I was talking with a Jewish
scholar who told me a story about Rabbi Hillel. A pagan came up to
Rabbi Hillel, a contemporary of Jesus, and said he would convert to
Judaism if the rabbi could explain the whole of Jewish teaching while
he stood on one leg. Hillel stood on one leg and said, "That what is
hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the Torah. The
rest is commentary. Go and study it."
And I asked, but what is a person supposed to believe? And the scholar
said to me that it's easy to see that I was brought up Christian.
What was it about the Axial Age that produced so many great sages?
In all four regions of the world where this great transformation
occurred, there was an unprecedented spate of violence. Iron weaponry
had been discovered. War suddenly became much more deadly and
terrible. States became larger, and they depended on an army to keep
people in order. There was the beginning of market capitalism.
Merchants were preying upon one another.
In every single case, the catalyst for religious change was revulsion
and violence. The Axial Age sages were trying to look into their
hearts to discover what were the root causes of violence in the human
psyche. Selfishness, egotism, greed, envy, hatred - all came from an
inflated sense of ego. They decided that the best way to get rid of
ego was to practice compassion.
It sounds so simple.
It is simple. In the meantime, religions have erected huge areas of
secondary goals, like orthodoxy, the correct sexual orientation,
instead of this. But then you have to understand that a lot of
religious people don't really want to be compassionate.
Why not?
They want to say, "I believe in this." For a lot of people, religion
is no fun, it seems, if you can't disapprove of other people. What the
Chinese sages in particular say is that when you say - "This is my
opinion. This is what the church teaches -" it's egotism. You're
trumpeting, "me, me and me."
Do people ever get angry at you during your book talks?
Oh yes. You have to realize that if people have different beliefs from
me, I don't care. It doesn't matter to me. If someone wants to
believe, say, that God created the world in six days, that's not a
belief I share, but if he or she wants to hold to that, that's fine by
me. I'm not in the business of changing anyone's beliefs.
But the religions say - this is not me - that if your beliefs make you
a kind, compassionate person, they're good beliefs. But if they make
you intolerant, unkind and aggressive, they're not good beliefs.
What drives you to write so much about religion?
The love of the subject. What I love doing more than anything else is
the research. It's awful when you have to write it all up. I'm a
natural scholar. I like nothing better than going into the British
Library, a wonderful library near my home, and settling down into my
seat with a huge pile of books, and gradually your mind starts
changing. For me, my study is a kind of prayer.
After all your research, do you believe in God?
It depends on what you mean when you say God. That's got distinct
images to people. I tend toward the more Buddhist or Eastern
conception of a more impersonalized divine. But all these notions of
the divine, none of them are completely right because God is greater
than anything a human could conceive. No one has the last word on God.
To subscribe, send a message to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Or go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FairfieldLife/
and click 'Join This Group!'
SPONSORED LINKS
| Maharishi university of management | Maharishi mahesh yogi | Ramana maharshi |
YAHOO! GROUPS LINKS
- Visit your group "FairfieldLife" on the web.
- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
- Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service.
